Living with Rachel Berry is just as overwhelming as Santana imagines it.
Their studio apartment gives the word small a new meaning. The kitchen is particularly claustrophobic - the area between the stove and the refrigerator directly behind it is barely wide enough for Santana to stand and cook anything. They share everything. There is one bed, but it's so not like that.
The friendship that they'd started forging in the month before graduation has grown. But Santana doesn't trust Rachel yet. They pseudo-bond over the existence of their shared losses - she over Brittany and Rachel over Finn - though admittedly, Santana thinks Rachel's got the better end of the deal there - she is free, while Santana just feels…lost.
She moved out here with the money from her mom, and not much else. Santana knows she's a star, but she also knows it doesn't just come to a person. She knows if she wants this, she'll have to work for it. So, just like Rachel goes to classes every day and works her ass off, Santana works, too. She takes any job she can find, and in her spare time, she networks. She asks Rachel to teach her what she learned in dance class, because Santana doesn't have the money to take one, and God, she misses Brittany.
The mornings are chaotic, with both of them vying for the bathroom, as that's the only place with an actual door. Santana took her privacy for granted before, but not after this. Rachel has this way of taking over absolutely everywhere at once. If Santana touches the television, tuned to Stage & Screen whenever Rachel is home, she knows.
"Santana! Don't touch that! It's A Whole New World!" she exclaims from behind the closed bathroom door, as if it's the first time she's ever heard it.
"Seriously, Rachel, if I have to listen to one more Broadway or soundtrack song, you're going to regret it."
"Oh my God!" Rachel gushes, oblivious. "It's Rainbow High! Don't you just love Madonna in Evita?" she asks.
Santana flops onto the bed. It's more than what it looks like. Let's face it, everything is more than what it looks like, with Santana. It looks like she's just being an asshole. And she is. But it's just her luck that every single song - in some twisted way - reminds her of Glee club. There was the theme from Rocky Horror, which of course had her remembering the Rocky Horror week. Anything at all from RENT reminded her of the duet Rachel and Mercedes sang when they were supposed to hate each other. Good Morning from Singin' in the Rain - which Rachel insisted on singing, loudly at 6 AM - brought Mr. Schuester and Mike Chang to mind. Thinking of Mike, of course, made Santana think of Brittany, and that was not where Santana wanted her thoughts to be.
Deep down, Santana knows that Rachel is just as wrecked as she is. She knows that Rachel thinks that if she denies there is a problem, Finn will just magically come to New York and forget about joining the army. Santana knows she isn't one to judge. If Rachel wants to cope by plastering a smile so fake it hurts onto her face every day, and make a big deal over stupid songs that make Santana's heart hurt, then good for her.
Santana gets the hell out as fast as possible. She goes to her crap job where she serves ungrateful people food all day. Seeing all the busy people on the New York streets makes her miss other classmates. When she sees the guy in the wheelchair, on his hands-free phone, she thinks of Artie. The blonde walking with a familiar self-possession becomes Quinn in a heartbeat. The well-dressed kid could be Blaine. The teenagers in love might be Mike and Tina.
Might be. But Santana knows they aren't.
So while Rachel copes through systematic denial and pouring herself into the performing arts, Santana works. And, more often than she cares to admit, she finds herself singing. Most of the time - in public - there are happy songs sung under her breath. Selena's Como La Flor, Kris Allen's My Weakness,Shakira's Waka Waka, and one humiliating morning, a coworker caught her belting the chorus of Josh Groban's In Her Eyes.
There are other songs. Songs Santana saves for when she's alone in the evenings, with Rachel's old keyboard on her lap. Then, Santana closes her eyes. Then, she lets herself go there, and feel the hole inside that nothing can fill. Matthew Good Band's Running for Home, Lily Kershaw's As It Seems, Johnny Cash's Hurt and Andrew Belle's In My Veins are familiar and Santana caresses each word, each note, and the loneliness in them, like an old friend.
It is after midnight and Santana's still singing. She's learned to ignore the neighbors who bang on their walls. Mostly because of the rarity that is their across-the-hall neighbor - an elderly lady who loves Rachel and brings them muffins. She tells them to keep singing. She says it reminds her of her youth.
Santana hopes she'll remember her own high school days like that. With happiness instead of so many regrets.
She's put it off for as long as possible, but this last song is begging to be sung. So, what can she do? Santana gives in, clumsily playing the melody and chords and singing softly so as not to wake the sweet old lady, who probably has been asleep for hours by now.
Alanis Morissette's Not As We came out when Santana was fourteen. She fell in love with it from day one. But it was years before she got the courage to sing it. Tonight, though, she can't help but give into the desire to give words to this feeling of being constantly lost…of being constantly small…
When the bed sinks beside Santana, and she hears Rachel joins in, alternating low and high harmonies that fill out the song in ways Santana might have never guessed. Rachel doesn't take over, she just sits. She just joins in. Santana doesn't realize she is crying until she hears Rachel sniff from beside her. Until she feels an arm slip around her from behind.
They each are just as broken as the other.
This hurts.
They are both good liars. But as long as they are honest where it counts, they might be okay.
Santana looks Rachel in the eye. They keep singing.
The End.